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One Room Challenge Week 6: When Renovations Go Awry

As you can tell by the title, I don't have the grand bathroom renovation reveal I was hoping to show you today. Sometimes, renovations don't always work out as planned.

French bistro bathroom with 3d black and white tile and blue panelling

Welcome and thanks for stopping by! If you're new here, I'm a Toronto-based, plaid-loving blogger who's intent on fixing up her city colonial and her country cottage, one DIY at a time.

Before we get to our troubles, let's backup and recap what has happened up to today.

In Week 1, we revealed our plans to take this bathroom from dated to tranquil
In Week 2, we shared the inspiration from our favourite French restaurant and how we intended to infuse this space with bistro style
On Week 3, we shared our tile options and on Week 4, we showed you all of the pretty fixtures and accessories
Week 5 was full steam ahead, with a long list of To Do's and some good progress being made

And on Week 6? Week 6 was all about this...



Let me explain. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that on the weekend we were at the point of finally installing the vanity. And then we made a very disheartening and unfortunate discovery: the wall behind the vanity had a gradual and significant bow. At it's furthest point, there was a gap between the tiled wall and the countertop of about 2/3".

Cue the tears.

Since we had installed new drywall, the cause of the bow would have to be the studs inside the wall. They likely were not installed in line. Our options were few: either order a new custom countertop that was scribed and measured to fit the curve in the wall, or rip out the tiles, level the wall, and reinstall the tiles.

Neither was very appealing but the second option would be significantly cheaper. And so, over the last few days, instead of installing art and fluffing towels, we were back to demolition.



Here's the Before of the bathroom. It's funny the things you don't notice. See the metal L channel sitting on the countertop in the photo above? We thought it was strange but didn't really think much about it. And now we know the truth... that metal strip was covering a very wide gap behind the countertop.

Taking out the new tile was a fair bit of work - Sean did a really good job of installing them, ha! Initially we thought we could just build up the drywall with drywall compound but the drywall was glued solid to the tiles and we had to cut the drywall out too. We're only redoing the portion of the wall visible above the vanity so there will be a bump lower in the wall. Then we had to sister in new studs. You can see how far out of line the old studs were! Next, we'll have to install new drywall and then lay and grout the tiles (again).

It's an annoying fix but we'll be happy to have done it and have a level wall. I do have to say it has taken the wind out of our sails a bit... we've been at this renovation full steam for six weeks and I think we'll be finishing it up at a slower pace.

French bistro bathroom with 3d black and white tile and blue panelling,  champagne bronze showerhead

But the bathroom is looking SOOOOO good though. I'm sharing just a few sneak peeks. I'm completely thrilled with the floor tile, the wall panelling, the shower fixtures. It's so pretty and I cannot wait to have this bathroom finished!

French bistro bathroom with 3d black and white tile and blue panelling,  champagne bronze showerhead

Even in it's half-finished state, this Now and Then is very very satisfying.

We couldn't have got this far without the support of our amazing partners, The Home Depot Canada and Delta Faucet Canada. I love being able to use their products to transform our home into spaces we love.

A special thank you to Linda of Calling It Home for organizing the One Room Challenge. I'm so thankful she created this event to push us to love on our home and transform it on a timeline. We'll keep working on this bathroom until it's done so I hope you'll check back to see the final transformation in the coming weeks!

Room Resources:

Floor tile
Bathtub
Wall tile
Paint - Glacial 27-2 Pratt & Lambert colour matched in Behr Premium Plus Ultra Paint
Stool
Vanity
Shower head
Rug

Hop on over to the One Room Challenge blog to see more amazing projects from the Guest Participants!



Disclosure: This project is sponsored by The Home Depot Canada and Delta Faucet Canada. All expressed opinions and experiences are my own words. Thank you for supporting the brands whose quality products I bring into my own home. Affiliate links have been used in this post.

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Did you enjoy this room transformation? Check out our previous One Room Challenge projects:



Preppy Trad Living Room

Tropical Dining Room

Serene Master Bedroom

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